This notice is a combined synopsis/solicitation, Notice of Intent. The Midwest Area for the Agricultural Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture intends to issue an award to Affymetrix, Inc., 3380 Central Expressway, Santa Clara, CA 95051. This is a sole source procurement under the authority of FAR 6.302-1 Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements. This is a requirement of the Cereal Disease Lab (CDL), MWA, ARS, USDA at St. Paul, MN for an Affymetrix microarray custom chip containing oligonucleotide sequences representing the genome of Fusarium graminearum and the purchase of 360 chips. Gene set will be provided to Affymetrix by CDL. This chip will be unique and specific to CDL. The design and manufacturing process of this custom gene chip is wholly patented and owned by Affymetrix (USPNos. 5445934 and 5744305). The custom GeneChip will be made by photolithography manufacturing technology (USPNos. 5424186, 5510270), developed solely by Affymetrix. A 11 um feature size with 23,000 features per chip is requested. The multi-genome GeneChip probe array must enable identification of 2-fold or greater levels of change in expression levels, and detection of as little as 1 mRNA transcript in a complex mixture of 100,000. The GeneChip probe array must contain multiple unique probes designed to be Perfect Match (PM), 25-mer oligonucleotide probe pairs, to represent each predicted gene, and multiple probes designed to be Mis-Match (MM), to enable calibration of non-specific hybridization data (USPNo.5527681). Additional control sequences (plant and bacterial) must also be available on the chip for hybridization control, and housekeeping gene analysis. The probe selection strategy for the multi-genome custom GeneChip probe array was based upon a probe design database (USPNo. 6188783) and was able to distinguish between highly homologous sequences and those of closely related gene families, strains, species and genus of bacteria. The Fusarium custom GeneChip probe array will be housed in a fixed volume reaction chamber (USPNos. 5945334, 6140044) providing automated and consistent hybridization of samples to the array. CDL will process the chips at the core lab at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN which contains: the Affymetrix GeneArray Scanner, Fluidics Station, 640 Hybridization Oven, Micro Array Suite/Data Mining Tool (USPNos. 5871928, 6040138, 6197506), MicroDB, and LIMS software database. No other photolithography-based chip, apart from those purchased from Affymetrix is compatible with the Affymetrix system in place at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN. No telephone inquiries will be accepted. Interested parties should submit written responses including prices and technical data sufficient to determine capability to meet the entire requirement and must be received in this office within 10 calendar days after publication of this notice. It should be noted that no contract will be awarded on the basis of offers received in response to this notice, but will be used to determine if a comparable source more advantageous to the Government is available. If no affirmative written responses are received, negotiations will be held with Affymetrix without further notice. This acquisition is being conducted under the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act, Simplified Acquisition Procedures.

Bid Protests Not Available